Monday, 25 May 2009

Colour blindness

Here's what happened even very recently to hurt the innocent under Catholic Christianity when people follow their beliefs:

An investigation by the Today Programme has uncovered new evidence that Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales failed to act appropriately when dealing with paedophile priests in his former diocese of Arundel and Brighton.The Cardinal is currently the subject of a police inquiry over claims that he covered up the activities of one paedophile priest - Father Michael Hill. Yesterday Hill admitted abusing more children - some of them disabled.

Two years ago we revealed that Michael Hill's Bishop knew he was a paedophile but allowed him to continue working. That Bishop was Cormac Murphy O'Connor, then in charge of Arundel and Brighton, now the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal and Head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.Documents from that original investigation confirm what the Bishop knew and when.

In July 1981 Michael Hill was sent to a therapeutic centre following concerns about his sexual behaviour. In letters, Cormac describes the matter as "very serious". He questions whether Hill should have the pastoral care of a parish.

Responding to our original investigation, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor issued a statement apologising to victims. In his defence he said the decisions he made at that time were not irresponsible and that there was a genuine ignorance among bishops, priests, and society at large about the compulsive nature of child abuse.Cold comfort for the victims of paedophile priests.

Get that?

The Catholic Church rightly saw child abuse as a sin (which it is, amongst other things), and stopped it within its own lights in the right way by extracting confession, contrition, and offering absolution and forgiveness. The cover-up was human: all-too human, and not at all praiseworthy, but still.

My point here is that belief drives actions.

I recall listening to this very BBC programme in which they articulated that it was as much Christian/Catholic theorlogy and philosophy that led to the priest concerned not being exposed, charged, and punished by the courts since back then the Cardinal was unaware that child-molesters tend to be paedophiles that have an illness resembling a dysfunction of the free will. They are compelled to do what they want, or else they consider themselves to be compelled [I'm not ruling them out from just being immoral bastards who choose not to let their consciences overrule their lusts], and they do the deed.The Church saw these crimes purely in theological terms of sin, guilt, remores and contrition and felt that that was sufficient and the right thing to do.

Wrong, but honest.

Here's the BBC's coverage of the latest and the worst of it on their website today.One main story only, (after all, it's in a foreign country that isn't in America or Israel) but with three linksgoingout to other aspects of this terrible story.

Christianity is officially against child abuse (it suppressed child sacrifice and other forms of infanticide in the later Roman Empire), plus gladiatorial combat and eventually the shameful Christian share of the slave trade, and is still in the battle against abortion and euthanasia.

The secular and libertine Left hates Christianity for those reasons.

But what if it not only did the Church fail in its duty to protect children within its care from abuse, but what if it taught that child abuse was okay - indeed sanctioned at the highest level? Would we hear the end of it, perhaps, from the BBC and its ilk?Let's field test my theory, shall we?

Try this for size:

Luke 5: 11. 'Miriam (the Lord be pleased with her) reported: Jesus (praise him) married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house at the age of nine. She further said: We went to Nazareth and I had an attack of fever for a month, and my hair had come down to the earlobes. Anne (my mother) came to me and I was at that time on a swing along with my playmates. She called me loudly and I went to her and I did not know what she had wanted of me. She took hold of my hand and took me to the door, and I was saying: Ha, ha (as if I was gasping), until the agitation of my heart was over. She took me to a house, where had gathered the women of the town. They all blessed me and wished me good luck and said: May you have share in good. She (my mother) entrusted me to them. They washed my head and embellished me and nothing frightened me. The Son of God (praise him) came there in the morning, and I was entrusted to him.

and:

Romans 2: 17. 'Miriam (the Lord be pleased with her) reported: the Son of God (praise him) married her when she was seven years old, and he was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he (the Lord Jesus) died she was eighteen years old.

Do you think that our secular humanist friends would be reticent about where Christian child abuse comes from these days?

I don't think so, somehow.

Only, of course, the passages aren't from Luke and Romans, but from here.

Which tells you all you need to know about how large and powerful sections of our secular humanist leaders care about secularism, humanity, and leadership.There are going to be many honourable exeptions, but not for the mere £140 per year that is the BBC'suniquesourceof funding.

Hat tips (thanks for the topic in the first place) to Ross and Dumb Jon.

Note also that when we see charity ads on the telly highlighting child abuse, the child pictured is white - always. And what do white children have? White parents.

However when we see local authority ads promoting fostering*, or documentaries about the problem of finding foster families we see a different demographic entirely amongst the children.

*Im using the pool of children available for fostering as a proxy or guide towards those children being abused. ie Abused children will tend to end up in the pool of available foster children and therefore this may be a guide to who the abusing families tend to be.

An anti-racist would counter this by tutting and rolling their eyes and saying that white racist foster parents have snapped up all the nice white kids leaving the others behind.

I would counter that by asking that the state, who I'll bet have good stats on all this stuff, to release those figures and we can see if there are any racial disparities (or none at all).